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JP Morgan is set to leap to the top of the US equity capital markets league tables after leading a $6bn (€4.5bn) share sale from Wells Fargo as analysts predict a rush of stress-test related new issues to capture available supply at relatively attractive pricing.

Before the Wells Fargo deal Goldman Sachs led the US rankings with $8.5bn of league table credit, after leading a $5.75bn share sale for itself last month, according to Dealogic, the investment banking research provider.

JP Morgan previously had $6.6bn of league table credit and will receive another $3bn from the Wells deal when it is completed, allowing it to overtake Goldman, who will move down to number two.

Morgan Stanley also said in a statement that it had commenced a public offering of $2bn of its common stock with itself as sole bookrunner. The bank previously had $5.2bn of league table credit and the $2bn from its own deal will take it from fourth to third place.

Brad Hintz, an analyst at BernsteinResearch, said in a report that banks have a few potential avenues to raise common equity – they can convert existing private preferred equity to common stock, convert existing Tarp preferred equity to common, or attempt to tap the equity markets.

Hintz said: “Bernstein notes that there may be limited capacity in the equity markets for supporting large common equity issuances by financial institutions."

He added: "Equity underwriting volumes are down 26% year-to-date from already weak levels posted through May of last year and down 50% from the year-to-date period for 2007. This means that there will likely be a rush of new issues to capture the available supply at relatively attractive pricing.”

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Citigroup, for example, is not raising new equity but said in a statement it will expand its previously disclosed public exchange offers of preferred and trust preferred securities for common stock by $5.5bn to $33bn.

Bank of America is going to raise $17bn through a combination of an at-the-money equity issuance program, an exchange of preferred to common stock for institutional investors and $10bn of asset sales. These sales include the wealth manager First Republic and asset manager Columbia Management.

An at-the-money issuance program is when the bank sells stock through normal market operations and does not receive credit in Dealogic’s league tables.

Ken Lewis, chief of executive of Bank of America, said in a conference call that the average trading volume of the bank’s shares on a daily basis is 500 million and an at-the-money program could take up between 5% and 15% on daily basis.

Lewis said the company had discussed a rights issue, which would be less dilutive for existing shareholders, but decided that the combination of the above actions would be best.

Hintz said: “Although Treasury believes it has enough Tarp funds remaining to rescue banks, we note that it is unclear where additional funds will come from if Treasury's projection proves wrong, since Congress appears resistant to the idea of using taxpayers to fund another round of Tarp.”

Bank holding companies deemed to need to raise capital have until June 8 to develop a detailed capital plan, and until November 9 to implement that capital plan.